Census Officials Want High-Tech Census in 2020

A top U.S. census official told a National Academies' panel today that the decennial enumeration reflects an era that doesn't exist anymore—and that the 2020 census can't be done in the traditional manner.

"The idea of filling out forms and knocking on doors needs to be set aside," says Arnold Jackson, who heads the 2010 census that will be carried out next spring. "It's run its course. An intervention into people's lives is no longer an effective way to proceed."

Jackson was speaking to the first meeting of an expert panel convened by the National Research Council's Committee on National Statistics to review the 2010 census. But the panel's real purpose is to look ahead to 2020, in particular, with suggestions on how the U.S. Census Bureau could do a better job the next time around by tapping into current technologies on how data are collected and managed.

That's a tough assignment. As the mechanism for apportioning congressional districts—and billions of federal dollars linked to geographic, income, and population data—the census has always been a political football.